Obama’s Planeteers and their New War on Electricity

The Obama Administration is set to ring in the new year with costly regulations on the companies that power your home, place of work, and businesses you frequent. So while you’re waiting to watch the ball drop, keep in mind that the cost of almost everything is about to rise.

What Election?

“The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.” -Ronald Reagan

The President has been a very busy bee since his party, and his policies, were soundly rejected in the 2014 elections. Instead of seeking reconciliation and compromise with Republicans, President Obama has turned to “going it alone” with his “pen and phone.” Since the November elections, the President has unilaterally given legal status to five million illegal aliens, opened up trade relations with Communist Cuba, made a “climate treaty” with China, and declared Alaska’s Bristol Bay off-limits to oil and gas drilling. A recent USA Today study found that President Obama has made the most use of the executive action since President Carter.

However, the most damaging of his recent actions may be new regulations on coal-based power plants that will significantly raise the cost of many Americans’ energy bills as well as the price of pretty much every good and service on the market.

You may recall that not long after the Democrats rammed Obamacare through both houses of Congress, they immediately turned from control of the health care industry to control of the energy industry. This plan was called “Cap-and-Trade” and would have put costly burdens on power plants in the middle of a recession, and would have further injured an already fragile economy.

Fortunately, the American people, already disgruntled with the various bailouts, $1 trillion “stimulus” bill, and the unpopular new health care law, rose up to defeat the bill.

Now, the President is enacting these rules, without Congress, thanks to his Planeteers at the faceless federal bureaucracy. You can almost hear Obama declare: “The Power is yours!” These new rules will force coal-based plants to cut its emissions by 30 percent over the next 15 years.

The Captain Planet Administration

“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” – James Madison

The motivation behind all these new “climate rules” is simple: save the planet, kill the coal plants.

“The one thing the president really needs to do now is to begin the process of shutting down the conventional coal plants,” Daniel P. Schrag, a member of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology said. “A war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”

Schrag may call it a “war on coal,” but President Obama has essentially declared a war on electricity, because coal-based power plants are responsible for most of our electricity in America. The reasoning behind these new rules is to save the world from that coming apocalypse known as global warming (or is it climate change, or climate disruption?)

“We have a moral obligation to act,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said upon the announcement of the plan. But where is the morality in cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs and increasing electricity costs for millions of Americans who are already struggling?

Our Wallets May Get Lighter, But At Least Our Winters Will Be Colder

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of all its victims may be the most oppressive.” -C.S. Lewis

Obama himself admitted, back in 2008 as a presidential candidate, that his energy plan would cause “electricity rates to necessarily skyrocket.” He even went on to explain how forcing power plants to retrofit their operations would impose huge costs that the plants would have to pass on to consumers.

Of course, energy bills are not the only costs that will go up for the average American. Since the economy is so dependent on electricity, the accumulation of increased costs on manufacturers and businesses will force these entities to raise their prices accordingly. Don’t take my word for it: the Congressional Budget Office said so.

You see, the President–the earth’s greatest champion–doesn’t care how much money this will take out of your pocket, or how many jobs are lost, because he believes he is slowing the rise of the oceans and healing the planet. But is Obama’s plan really going to save the planet from a looming apocalypse?

A recent study found that even if America ceased all carbon emissions immediately, (meaning, if we all went back to using outhouses, horse drawn carriages, and oil lamps), it would reduce the global temperature by less than a tenth of a degree over the next four decades. That’s because China and the rest of the developed world is still putting out plenty of carbon emissions.

Speaking of which, Obama’s recent treaty with China on carbon regulations involved strict burdens on the American economy while placing no regulations at all on the Chinese economy. China merely pledged to institute new rules by the year 2030. According to climate scientists, we’ll probably all be under miles of melted ice by then.

But is there truly a manmade climate apocalypse on the horizon?

Prophets and Profits

“I must report that our models are in the process of failing.” -Dr. Patrick J. Michaels

Dr. Patrick J. Michaels has served as president of the American Association of State Climatologists, as chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society, and on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is one of many climate scientists who have been expressing skepticism over much of the climate alarmism that is now driving regulatory policy in the United States.

“The science is not settled,” he recently said in testimony before Congress, directly contradicting President Obama’s recent claim.

In addition, Steve Koonin, a leading scientist and former undersecretary for science in Obama’s Energy Department, penned a recent op-ed explaining why climate science is not in a place to be dictating public policy. However, President Planet is using self-assured doomsayers in the climate science community to do exactly that.

Over 1000 international scientists, many of whom have been on the UN’s climate panel known as IPCC, have also voiced their criticisms, despite Obama’s claim that “the science is settled.”

You have probably heard the dire warnings of disappearing coast lines, more deadly hurricanes, the end of snow, the extermination of whole species, and the infamous “climate refugees.” Climate scientists have been making these types of claims for decades, only to find that everything’s pretty much the same, even while the worldwide output of carbon emissions continues to increase.

So-called climate experts, whose predictions have been way off, as well as various media outlets, have consistently clamored to blame anything and everything on manmade global warming. The conflict in Darfur, UFO sightings, patterns in heroin addiction, rise in insurance premiums, and even global cooling has been blamed on global warming. But if anyone, including credible scientists, question these assertions or the idea that man is bringing on a climate apocalypse, he or she is labeled a flat-earther, a non-believer, a heathen.

Meanwhile, Democrat Rep. John Delaney (who represents my district in Maryland) recently introduced legislation that would give state lawmakers the option of instituting a carbon tax in place of the new EPA rules. Of course, many state governments would gladly choose the new tax revenue.

We know that carbon taxes are bad, because other countries have tried them. They generally cause citizens’ pocketbooks to get lighter while decreasing the reliability of the power grid. In fact, Australia just repealed its carbon tax because of such problems.

A recent study found that a carbon tax would result in declining incomes, massive job losses, higher prices at the pump, and steep hikes in electricity prices.

Now if Only the Mayan Apocalypse Alarmists Would Organize our Economy…

“(The power of the State) covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.” -Alexis de Tocqueville

Regardless of one’s beliefs regarding global warming, it would not be a concerning topic if not for the Enviro-Statists. Enviro-Statists are those who use the State, or the central government, to advance a man-made, environmentalist agenda. In other words, instead of merely encouraging citizens to voluntarily reduce their carbon footprint, the Enviro-Statist employs the heavy hand of government to force the citizen into complying with his or her agenda.

Thanks to the Obama administration and the EPA, the President has unilaterally enacted Enviro-Statist policies without Congressional approval or any sort of process that resembles democracy and republicanism.

In fact, concerns about climate change hardly register with Americans. In a recent Gallup survey, global warming concerns did not even crack the top 20 of important issues for American voters. What did appear high on the list was unemployment, the economy, government corruption, the federal debt, and poverty. The policies of Obama’s EPA will exacerbate these real-world problems while ensnaring the ordinary citizen ever-more in its tentacles.

Of course, this is yet another example of Obama meddling in various industries, playing crony capitalist. Instead of letting the market decide what type of electricity consumers prefer, Obama taxes and regulates the companies he doesn’t like, while subsidizing those he likes. Obama has sent billions in taxpayer money to failed green-energy start-ups like Solyndra, while increasingly taxing and regulating proven sources of relatively cheap and reliable energy.

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Garrett Humbertson

Garrett Humbertson is a recent graduate of Regent University and Liberty University with degrees in Video Broadcasting, Cinema, and Government Policy. Garrett is passionate about communicating liberty principles to his generation, and he is now the Video Production Specialist for Citizens for Self-Governance. In his spare time, Garrett runs California Avenue Films and writes. Follow him on Twitter: @G_Humbertson
View all posts by Garrett Humbertson

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